tongue; and can unite in singing the praises of the Lord. Any person visiting these stations may soon perceive that civilization has made considerable advance, and that they are stations which hold out great prospects of usefulness to the Christian Missionary." Mr. Marsden observes; "The minds of the chiefs are much enlarged, and a way is gradually preparing for the Gospel. Nothing has happened, since the establishment of the mission to the present time, but what might have been expected, especially from the natives. As Shunghee justly observes, We have made no new laws: we have established no new customs: we are only following the institutions of our forefathers, which we cannot as yet relinquish our forefathers ate human flesh, and taught us to do so.' Many of their superstitions are, however, giving way. I am surprised-not at the number and greatness of their public crimes-but that they govern themselves so well without laws. When the light of Divine Revelation once shines upon them, it will be like the sun rising upon the benighted world.”

West-Indies Mission.

:

"This field of the society's labours," remark the Committee, "may be considered as connected with that in West Africa, the objects in both being the same-the remuneration, by the blessings of the Gospel, of Africa and her children, for those enormous wrongs which they have suffered at our hands; for wrongs they are, and wrongs they will continue to be, how many ages soever have passed since they were ́first inflicted, and whatever may be the period which must elapse before they can be done away." "If blind self-interest, or the exercise of cruel authority over human beings, have disqualified any persons from cordially entering into the just and humane views which now actuate the government and the country, we may well hope, from the success which the question of the abolition of the Slave Trade obtained, by the patience and perseverance of its friends, over feelings and opinions even still more hostile, that a steady course of wise and humane proceedings will carry with it, at no great distance of time, the whole mind and conscience of the country.”

The Society's labours in this quarter have hitherto been limited to education. In the islands of Antigua, Barbadoes, Dominica, and St. Vincent, it had fourteen schools; which contained, 2172 scholars. Many applications having been made to the Committee, by proprietors of estates, to supply their slaves with teachers, and

liberal offers having been made to assist in their support, the Committee had pledged themselves to do all in their power to second these just and benevolent views.

North-West America Mission.

Mr. West had exerted himself indefatigably in establishing schools, and had placed them on such a footing, as to secure the benefit of them, not only to the Indian children whom the Society has primarily in view, but also, on the payment of a small sum annually, to the children of the settlers. Fifteen Indian boys and fifteen girls were to be received, for maintenance and education at the Society's charge, as soon as they could be collected from the Indians. Eight Indian boys and two Indian girls were under the care of a halfbreed woman. The day schools were attended by seven children of settlers: and the Sunday schools had an average attendance of sixteen boys, fifteen girls, and eight adults.

Mr. West has just given to the public a very interesting account of his proceedings, in a volume entitled "Substance of a Journal during a Residence at the Red River Colony, and frequent Excursions among the North-West American Indians."

M. PESCHIER'S DEFENCE OF IN DIAN MISSIONS.

The following is an extract from a discourse by M. le P. Peschier, President of the Missionary Society at Geneva, delivered at the general meeting. We present it to our readers for the purpose of shewing the bright aspect which our Bible, missionary, and educational exertions in India assume in the eyes of a pious and intelligent foreigner, as well as for the sake of the refutation given to the statements of the Abbé Dubois. After succinctly sketching the history of India, M. Peschier proceeds :-"The fall of Tippoo Saib, in 1799, corroborated the English power; and thenceforward, the peaceable ruler over sixty millions (now over one hundred millions) of men, she begins to vindicate its colossal greatness, by the benefits conferred by a just and happy government. It is from this period also that modern missionary societies date their establishment, and from which they recommenced the holy labours, so long interrupted during wars and troubles. This brief sketch, superfluous to those well informed persons who listen to us, will assist you in forming an idea of this immense population, consisting of aboriginal inhabitants of the country; some attached

to the Brahminical superstitions, others to the crescent of Mahomet; of native people of European origin, tarnishing by their ignorance, or dishonouring by their manners, the worship they profess; of men, likewise, more occupied with projects of gain than the advancement of religion; enervated by the climate, distracted by luxury and the indulgence of great cities. What a field is this! And how often must the seed of the word fall amongst rocks and thorns! What difficulties, what contentions, what obstacles, what subjects for lamentation and prayer! The missionaries do not practise dissimulation: their letters, full of candour and humility, acquaint us with the real facts more fully than all their adversaries together. One of the most grievous oppositions to their work is, doubtless, that which they meet in some of the southern provinces, on the part of other Christians, whose form of worship and maxims of government are incompatible with the doctrines they preach. Nevertheless, they very rarely speak of it: they delight in doing justice to whatsoever they recognize as useful and respectable; they even propose, as examples, expedients for the dissemination of truth, the model of which they find in a different communion; they mildly complain of not experiencing the same fairness, and they deplore an assimilation of ceremonies between Christian worship and idolatrous superstition. We might be tempted to apprehend that there was in these complaints a leaven of antipathy, and some slight disregard of Christian charity. But, lo a voice (alluding to the work of the Abbé Dubois) is raised to justify them: it boldly avows this assimilation, in accusing those who send missions to India of aiming at an absolute impossibility; and proposes to make Christians by concealing the holy word! This voice, issuing from the south of the Indian peninsula, has been heard in England, has echoed in France, and has penetrated even hither."

"We are asked for facts; and it is by facts alone that the practicability of an undertaking is to be demonstrated. But what facts are required?

That every

year we should announce the conversion of an entire Otaheite to Christianity? If we spoke, as the adversary of evangelical missions, of ten, thirty, a hundred, thousand conversions in one single city, we should be taxed with exaggeration and fable. And if we say that the Gospel makes itself known by means of diligent preaching, by elementary treatises, by the

distribution of the sacred volume; that prejudices diminish; that curiosity is roused to listen; that the benefits of education are preparing the rising generations to receive the truth; that already it has disciples every where; that the edifice of superstition begins to totter by the very hands interested in sustaining it;-men of too impatient tempers tell us that we possess no facts, and conclude that nothing can be done. A person who has sojourned thirty years in India, preaching to unbelievers, declares to us that he has not been able to work a single conversion. We do not question the veracity of such an acknowledgment; it must have cost him much to make; but how long is it since the inutility of one man's labours in a given career is allowed to prove the impossibility of success by other men and other means? It is, doubtless, extremely easy, in a combination of good and evil, to develop only the latter, in order to conceal the knowledge of the good operated. If Celsus and Porphyry had lived in the time of St. Paul, would they not have been able to record that the Apostle had been obliged to fly from Iconium, and was stoned at Lystra by the populace? Would it, therefore, have been less true that the churches were established in the faith, and increased in number daily?' Tacitus wrote of the first Christians, that they were condemned by the universal hatred of mankind; yet Christianity has vanquished the world by the charity of its disciples, and by the courage of its martyrs.-We are asked for facts: we reply, Behold them; come and see! We are asked for witnesses: we exhibit the missionaries: read their narratives, and tell us if you can withold your confidence from them. They revisit Europe to recruit their strength, and then return to their post: is it to renew unprofitable toils? We are asked for other witnesses: well then, we shew an entire nation, its travellers, its traders, its officiating ministers in India, its prelates, nobles, military commanders, legislators, and princes. Reflect, gentlemen, upon the constant intercourse between England and her Indian empire; upon the thousands of vessels annually passing to and fro: we may consider that Bengal is, to the English of all ranks accustomed to the sea, what a country house a few miles from the capital is to the inhabitants of our own country; can they be ignorant of what passes there? But we are called upon to produce witnesses, who, besides possessing a knowledge of the truth, are interested in speak

ing it: we adduce the numerous auxiliary societies, the committees of correspondence, who are employed, even in India, in biblical and missionary labours, and the establishment of schools and seminaries; who are continually adding their donations and subscriptions to the treasures accumulated in Europe. We are required to produce witnesses inaccessible by their character to deceitful illusions: I find this species of evidence in what we know of the progressive march of the English Government in Bengal. At first the projects of the Bible Societies and Missionaries excited alarm it seemed as if millions of Hindoos were about to rise and overwhelm an insignificant number of Europeans. Mildness and prudence, in the expedients employed to propagate the doctrine of charity and salvation, dissipated apprehension. The missionaries have been protected; schools, Christian congregations, missionary houses, have occupied ground granted by the local authority, and ships offered by their commanders. In the early part of the present century, Dr. Buchanan lamented to observe idolatrous ceremonies protected; protected, as it were, by a Christian nation: the police then attended upon the odious rites of Juggernaut and the funeral piles of widows. At the present day, Government is gradually advancing towards an object which, heretofore, we dared not even hope to reach. After the sacred drownings at the Isle of Saugor, suppressed by the Governor-General, Lord Wellesley; after the cessation of infanticide, obtained by Col. Walker from a tribe under his controul; after that of the judicial proofs known under the name of Ordeal; the Government have set limits to the sacrifices of widows, burnt or buried alive; and the English Society, at the head of which is a list of forty-three peers and eminent members of the lower house of Parliament, do not hesitate to declare, publicly, their anxiety to see these sacrifices soon entirely prohibited, as being not strictly required by the most ancient laws and primitive religion of the Hindoos. Can we doubt that these acts of Government are consequent upon the weakness observed in the superstitious opinions of a vast people? And the shadows of night having thus commenced their departure, can the twilight which appears be other than that proclaiming the rising of the Sun of Righteous*ness, bringing health in its beams?"

"You will hear, ladies, with congenial satisfaction that the fate of the Indian women has interested in a lively manner CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 281.

the ladies of England, and that a benevo lent society has been formed amongst them for the especial purpose of labouring in Bengal for the education of young women. It is to this portion of the human_race,” so degraded and so wretched under the influence of false religions, that the wives of the missionaries devote their attention, not disdaining the humble office of schoolmistress. Miss Cooke arrived at Calcutta with this view : she announced her design; Indian mothers with their daughters flocked around her; they required her to explain her motives. You perform then,' said they, 'an act agreeable to your God: here are our children; we resign them to you.' 'Our husbands,' says one, 'treat us a little better than brutes,' and they indulge the hope of becoming their partners and companions This Christian lady's ambition, when she quitted England, was to collect 200 children; and she soon had more than twice that number.

"We might easily reckon thousands, if we united in one sum the children in all the different schools (at Burdwan alone their number is nearly a thousand); and there would be no bounds to the enumeration of what has been done in this way; the details, in respect to the diversity of the forms and the extent of instruction, would be infinite. Large colleges are building at Cotym, in Malabar, for the ecclesiastical education of the Catanars, or Christian priests of that ancient church, at Madras, Calcutta, and at Serampore, a small district of the Danish territory, which has become celebrated by the labours of Baptist missionaries."

"I would speak of those versions of the sacred volume in twenty different languages, accomplished with the aid of the most skilful interpreters which the country afforded, with so much care, labour, and expense, and revised so scrupulously, and to which ten others are to be added. I would tell with what religious distrust, with what hesitation, and with what precautions, the missionaries admit their pupils to Christian baptism, and, more tardily still, their adult converts to the holy Supper: what joy is theirs, what fervour of gratitude towards God, when they believe they are able to discern the sincerity of a soul called into light; and what triumph for the faith, when the Almighty changes an adorer of idols into a preacher of the Gospel; such as was Anund, whom death snatched away last year, Abdoul Messeeh, and Bowley, all deemed worthy of divine ordination.

tuously told, has become odious in India! And he who so speaks has inhabited the very land where lived that genuine man of God, Schwartz, whose rare virtues made him be honoured as a father by the Rajahs of that country; whom the people blessed; to whom the East-India Company erected a monument, which is resorted to with respect; whose memory the first bishop of Calcutta found still surviving, when he visited the provinces; and who, according to the testimony of a person of high respectability, left, as the fruit of his labours, ten thousand converts from paganism. The names of Macaulay, of Munro, are affectionately repeated in the south of the peninsula, where they exercised, with impartiality, an extensive influence over the Hindoo Princes, the Syriac Christians, the evangelical churches, and those which belonged to the see of Rome. Even Rome herself has cherished and manifested towards them a sentiment of gratitude and esteem. The Christian converts are exposed to persecutions; but they support them for the love of Jesus, for

they constitute the touch-stone of their sincerity, and the sign of the children of God."

LONDON HIBERNIAN SOCIETY.

This Society was established in London in the year 1806, for the purpose of diffusing religious knowledge in Ireland. A deputation was sent in 1807 to ascertain the state of that country; and the result of their report was a determination on the part of the Society to confine their operations to the establishing of schools, and the circulation of the holy Scriptures. During the last year the number of schools amounted to 1072, containing 88,000 scholars receiving religious instruction, and there had been circulated 16,300 Bibles and Testaments in the English and Irish languages. The Society has 188 schools, in connexion with resident noblemen and gentlemen; 274 under the care of Clergymen; 26 under RomanCatholic priests; and 10 under Dissenting ministers.

FOREIGN.

FRANCE. The proceedings of the chambers continue to be nearly barren of subjects of great public interest. The only novelty of the mouth has been the presentation, to both chambers, of an able and spirited petition from forty-two of the first merchants and bankers of Paris, of whom thirteen are members of the chamber of commerce, complaining of the shameful extent to which the slave trade is carried on under the flag of France, and of the just imputations of bad faith or supineness to which this state of things exposes the French government, and calling on the legislature for new and stronger laws of repression against this odious and disgraceful crime. We bail this petition as a proof of the rising interest which exists in France on this subject; and we particularly rejoice that this first public symptom of feeling upon it should proceed from the mercantile body. The committee in the house of peers, to whom the petition was referred, recommended simply that it should lie on the table. This, however, was opposed by the Marquis de Marbois, the Viscount Lainé, the Count de Segur, the Baron Mounier, (the Duc de Broglie

unfortunately was absent,) who insisted on the necessity of referring it to the government, with a view to the consideration of the subject, and the proposal on their part of a new law if necessary; and this course was finally adopted.

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The chief topic of the month has been the approaching coronation, which is to be celebrated at Rheims, on the 29th, with the utmost splendour. The ecclesiastical arrangements, in particular, are most pompous; and exhibit the prominence which the ritual and spirit of Popery have of late been so rapidly and ominously acquiring in that country, at least in its public and official proceedings. The court, the missionary Jesuits, and the time-serving part of the bishops and clergy, with perhaps a comparatively few genuine devotees, have succeeded in fencing in some of the veriest mummeries of Popery by sanguinary enactments, at a time when the great majority of the people are probably sceptical as to the Divine authority of the first elements of the Christian faith. These things are deeply: afflicting to those of the French nation themselves who are anxious for the promotion of true religion and its attendant blessings, as well as those numerous